What is Peace?

Trying to understand the question: "What is Peace, and How do We Get There?"

Critical reflection…

• What do you think you need yet to know to better understand peace?
• What are the potentials and pitfalls of what we are doing here, of studying peace?

Our beginning points

• We recognize that there are differing levels of response and consciousness in us at different times
• We vary the level of peace-making and peacebuilding with the violence at hand
  

Approaches to Peace

Peace as:

• Personal non-violence
• Organizing non-violent social change
• What peace movements do
• Conflict resolution
• Creating new peace-making roles
  

Getting to peace at levels 1-3

Three major tasks are involved:

1. Getting ourselves and others to think differently (conceptualization)
2. Getting ourselves and others involved directly in problems (action)
3. Blending the two (thinking our way into new action and acting our way into new thinking)
   

How this works:

Another element: tensions

• How to balance my values/choices with others?
• How to make the global and local connections?
• How to balance realism with idealism?
• How to balance thinking with action - when do we act, when do we think or rethink???
  

Our model for peace involves building linkages

Between:

• The small and the large
• The local and the more global
• Thought, values and actions
• Methods of peace-building and the problems that emerge in a given setting
• The development of structures and processes that ensure peace (law)
  

Values and groups (small and BIG)

Values

Tough to get to peace without clarity about one’s values. Also, we must recognize this is evolutionary and stimulated by issues

Key groups

Looking at the local culture as your key reference groups (Paulo Freire, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, talked about growth points in the local culture.)

The link between the small and the big

• Depends on your place and time -- it is situational and cultural: NYC before and after 9/11 Response to 9/11 inside v. outside of US
• We must know how the issues about violence and peace get framed and how the structures work to see the “local-global” connection
• Involves vocations and avocations

Institutions

• What institutions “work” and why?
• What ones have key processes tied to them that can be mobilized?
• What structures operate to prohibit justice or peace?
• How to ensure the rule of law?

Issues

• Direct or observable violence
• “Structural” violence
• Understanding how issues “come and go” especially in US culture

Methods

• Personal stand of non-violence
• Develop a non-violent “change” movement
• Use conflict resolution
• Develop a protest or peace movement
• Invent peace in particular situations

Problems of studying peace

• “Study” involves open thinking, not action; action is training and training is “biased”. Thus peace studies is not really appropriate for the university.
• The inquiry isn’t full or open. It presumes that, “Peace is the answer - what are the questions?”
• Data of history suggests you should study violence, terrorism, and war as these are the real issues…and they will always be with us.  Those who think otherwise are fools and moralists.
• Those who study peace tend to be social misfits. They believe that all good things go together, like peace, joy, love, sisterhood.
   Let’s get real here…
   A less “personal” critique notes that for these folks everything seems to be a peace issue, from ordering a hamburger to playing football.